Lake trout action continues to be challenging on Cayuga Lake. For the record, Seneca Lake was also tough jigging this past weekend during the derby, so a lot of it is likely a weather issue. I had several reports come in from both waterways and both lakes fished tough on Saturday and Sunday. A friend who trolls, did well on silver fish (and some lakers) on Seneca on Saturday. Sunday was slower for him and Monday was also fairly tough, although he did catch some good fish on all three days.
As usual, some people find some fish and do alright, but the overall fish mood - for jigging, was neutral to negative. Today I was out with Bruce, who is just getting back into gear fishing after a 30 year absence. (He has been fly-fishing in recent years.) He missed his first good hit but not long afterwards he set into a nice 29" chunky lake trout. We found fish in a lot of areas ranging from 20' out to 120', but most were not very aggressive. Casting in somewhat shallow water resulted in a good number of follows and hits, but no solid hookups. Later on Bruce jigged up another nice fish. More casting also resulted in a bunch of follows but few hits. We gave it a great go and covered a lot of water, but again, thus far 2025 is proving to be the most challenging (aka "toughest") lake trout jigging year I've seen thus far. I do think that some steady warm to hot weather will get things up to par again. We shall see!
